It’s That Simple

In a world filled with challenges at every stage of life, we have grown accustomed to believing that if we want something, we have to work for it. Getting good grades requires us to study hard. Securing a good job means beating the competition. Building a career entails long days and sleepless nights. We even wake up to motivational quotes that remind us that nothing worth having comes easy. We accept difficulties and challenges as part of life, especially when the goal is worthwhile.

This kind of positivity is a wonderful outlook because it teaches us to work through the difficulties that come our way. It keeps us resilient in times when we would rather give up. Having hope that each challenge leads to something wonderful gives us the strength to push past the struggle. However, when it comes to spirituality, this outlook can end up becoming an obstacle for us.

Having experienced so many complications and challenges in life, we may question the simplicity of the spiritual path. When we stand before the Master, asking for guidance as we try to embark on our spiritual journey, we receive answers that sound so simple. Our intellect then begins to doubt that simple answer. How can it be that straightforward? Surely, there is something we must have missed. But the Masters remind time and again that all it takes to travel the spiritual path is to be a good human being and to attend to our meditation regularly – it really is that simple. The teachings are not complex. They are as straightforward as they seem. We tend to over-analyze and complicate them by over-thinking.

When something is simple, we often find it difficult to accept. The mind goes into overdrive wondering how it can be so simple. There must be a catch, a trick we’ve missed. Our mind has the knack of making simple things complicated.
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Once we have managed to convince ourselves that spirituality cannot be that simple, we look for alternative ways to reach our goal. We try everything instead of focusing on the one, simple answer that the Masters have repeatedly given us. And then we find ourselves feeling defeated or unable to make any progress.

In spirituality, we reach a point where we need to suspend our intellect and adopt a childlike innocence, which will help us accept the simplicity of the teachings. We need to unlearn all that we have imbibed over the years and just work towards realizing the truth. The key word here being ‘work’. It is one thing to realize that the teachings are simple, but quite another to understand that like all endeavours in life, we have to work hard to make progress.

All the Masters ask us to do is to sit in silence and focus with love and attention. Only when we do our work and experience the true Reality within will we realize that it really is just that simple.